ARTICLES

Must

I spoke with the quick witted and deep thinking lead singer of Must, Dave Ireland.
I found him to be honest and thought provoking. I am sure that you will fucking
dig him too.

MusicIncider: What inspires the lyrics for the band?
Dave: All sorts of things. On the first record, it is roots. It is a quest for
personal understanding and harmony. There is relationship thing is in there
too. To me, it is all that kind of universe that deals with the relationship
to the self. A heightened awareness.

MusicIncider: How did the band form?
Dave: It formed in London in 1999. It was the three of us at the time. The bass
player, the drummer, and myself, and we were living in a warehouse over there
recording things on four tracks. We were rehearsing and playing gigs around
there. But at the time in England there was a really big sort of pop dance environment,
and we didn’t really fit in. We were always keen to come to America. We
traveled over to LA a few times, and then the third time we came over we got
signed. It was actually at the South by Southwest festival. Wind-Up records
signed us and we moved over to New York in 2000.

MusicIncider: How did it feel to open for Aerosmith in Atlanta?
Dave: It was fantastic, and I actually really liked Atlanta too. I thought it
was one of the nicest cities that we traveled through. People seemed relaxed
and there was a good mix of things. It looked like there was a lot of education
going on there. The whole tour was great.

MusicIncider: From the Australian point of view, what do you think of the US
going to war?
Dave: Personally, I am opposed to war. The Australian government is obviously
supportive of it. That’s actually not indicative of what the people of
Australia think. There was a poll recently, and polls are more general, and
there was a seventy-five percent sway against the war. I just personally don’t
think it is necessary. I don’t think the threat exists that is being publicized
as being there. It is obvious what the mission of this whole thing is. It is
uncalled for. The thing that concerns me most is that it is creating further
division in the world and impacting the future and it is a future that we won’t
live around to see. Generations of children and grandchildren and all that stuff.
The world is constantly being divided. What different about the world than the
world a hundred years ago is that it is a smaller world. We have got to start
living as an international community not as a group of disparate tribes. –It
concerns me about the future because we are creating more division and hate.

MusicIncider: Who are your band members, and what instruments do they play?
Dave: I am the vocalist and I play some acoustic guitar. Charlie O’Neil
plays electric guitar. He is from the United Stated. The bass player is Kaiser
(Something?). He is from Germany. The drummer is Reuben Alexander, and he is
from England.

MusicIncider: Who were your musical influences growing up?
Dave: Everyone. Generally it was rock growing up. AC/DC, English music in general
seemed to get me. It was in my house all a lot. I even like melodic stuff, like
Simon and Garfunkel. In these days, we listen to a fair bit of electronica actually.
In the rock area, I think that System of a Down is pretty fantastic.

MusicIncider: How would you explain your music to a deaf mute person?
Dave: With sign language!

MusicIncider: Do you believe in psychics? Why or why not?
Dave: I don’t disbelieve. I don’t know enough about it to comment.
I think a lot of these things certainly exist and have relevance, even things
down to astrology. These are ancient art forms that throughout the middle ages
got put down by the Christian church and discredited. They have a valid point,
and they have something that is worth looking at. If you look in the papers
on a superficial level, it can look like quackery. You need to look further
under the surface of these things. It is a whole science in its own right. With
the subject being that we are aware of a lot more things unconsciously that
we probably realize. That are certainly people out there that are gifted to
see beyond what is there.

MusicIncider: Who is your favorite musician of all time and why?
Dave: I actually couldn’t single one out. For the group and myself, we
actually appreciate so many different things. That’s not one that I have
ever sat down and really considered.

MusicIncider: Have you ever inhaled?
Dave: Marijuana? Yeah yeah.

MusicIncider: Tell me about your latest music project.
Dave: We are just putting together some new songs really. We have been at it
since we got back. It is continuing down the melodic line. It is probably a
bit more contemporary. Lyrically, there are some politics involved. –I
think it is difficult not to have a say about what is going on at the moment.-It
is also dealing with what I think is a little repression about what is going
on in society and the slop that is being fed to us by the press and media. It
benefits the corporations for us in the general population for us to see things
in a certain way in order to profit. I also continue along the same line as
the first album about personal development spiritually, mentally and emotionally.

MusicIncider: Has any famous poet influenced your writing? Who was it and why?
Dave: Not influenced me, but I do like Yeats. I was reading some of his stuff
in San Francisco once, and I just thought he was brilliant. He can be pretty
morbid and tragic, but at the same time there s a sort of beauty behind it.

MusicIncider: What is your birth date?
Dave: December 17th.

MusicIncider: What is your favorite board game of all time?
Dave: I am not a great board game player, but I did enjoy Scrabble over in Australia
with my ninety-one year old grandmother. I have to go for that, because I have
had some good times with her.

MusicIncider: If you could open for any band in the world, who would it be
and why?
Dave: I haven’t thought hard about that one either. There would be a whole
bunch of bands it would be great to open for. I would rather be headlining the
gig. It would be quite a trip to open for the Beatles.

MusicIncider: How did 9-11 affect you?
Dave: I was in England at the time and I was scheduled to come back to America
about a week later. I was living above this guy and h walked out and said, the
plane just flew into the World Trade Center. We saw the second one live on TV.
We the second hit, I thought no this isn’t an accident. I was like everyone.
It was just shocking. You know that bizarre numb feeling that you can’t
really explain. Throughout the day, I thought what is the cost that will be
taken toward this. Over the next few days I felt, there are reasons why things
happen like this and what are the reasons of the people doing it.
I don’t mean to justify it in any way, but a hopeless situation has to
be used to understand why. I thought it was a chance.

MusicIncider: If you could be any super hero, who would it be and why?
Dave: I guess God!

MusicIncider: What age did you start playing at? Tell me how you wound up with
a guitar and who encouraged you to sing?
Dave: I started learning piano when I was about six or seven, guitar when I
was about 10. Music was always around the household. Everyone played music instruments.
My father was in choirs, and so was my mother at different times. Singing was
just one of those things that everyone did in the family. I loved music straight
on, before I understood what it really was. It was just a natural thing I started
doing.

MusicIncider: How do your parents feel about your music career?
Dave: Great! They’ve been supportive and they’re right for it. They
weren’t musicians professionally, but it made a lot of sense to them since
music has been a part of life for everyone in our family.

MusicIncider: What is your most memorable live show and why?
Dave: On the Aerosmith tour, we were in Las Vegas. It is hard to describe, but
it was just, wow, incredible. We are pretty consistent as a band I fell, but
that show just went off into some other orbit. It was fantastic.

MusicIncider: Who would be your dream date and why?
Dave: I met a girl just before I left Sydney, and I have to say she would be
the dream date.

MusicIncider: If you were stranded on a desert island and you could bring one
person, one book, and one cd-who and what would it be?
Dave: Could it be a burnt cd of all sorts of different things? I guess I would
have to have some DJ Shadow, some U2…I would probably sneak a few different
ones somehow. The book would be something by Norm Chomsky the person would be
the girl I met in Sydney.

MusicIncider: When do you plan to go on tour again?
Dave: We are going to be doing some local stuff. We have a new single coming
out in a week. We are going to do some promotion after that. We don’t
have anything planned, but we are going to get up and down the East coast again
and also keep working on the new material that we are doing. There is nothing
definitely planned as far as touring, but we will be working the new single.

MusicIncider: Give me your favorite quote of all time.
Dave: I do like one that someone post on our website.-Life is a tragedy for
those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.